A new study from the National Cancer Institute is proclaiming that eating red meat causes cancer.
This kind of study really bugs me. The science behind it is so profoundly flawed.
They followed a population and studied their eating habits and then concluded that the people with the highest cancer rates were the people eating the most meat.
They didn’t account for all the other possible factors. Like where the meat came from and how it is cooked.
What is most meat cooked in? What are McDonalds hamburgers cooked in?
VEGETABLE AND SOYBEAN OIL!
http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controller.nutrition.categories.ingredients.index.html
And read this, from a web page promoting soy to ward off cancer (http://www.cancercenter.com/after-care-services/soy.cfm):
Soy Oil is the natural oil extracted from the soybean. It is the most frequently consumed oil in the United States and accounts for nearly 75 percent of our total vegetable oil intake, mostly through processed food products like mayonnaise, coffee creamers, margarines, sandwich spreads and salad dressings. Oil sold in the grocery store under the generic name “vegetable oil” is usually 100 percent soy oil.
Soy oil is in everything! From ketchup to baby formula. Most restaurants use vegetable (soy) oil for all their frying and grilling.
So how can these scientists deduce that meat was the culprit?
These scientists assumed that it was barbecuing and frying meat that causes the problem:
Grilling meat over a direct flame results in fat or meat juices dripping onto the hot fire. That creates flames that contain the harmful compounds, which can then adhere to the surface of the food. That process can happen with chicken and turkey as well as red meat.
“That’s why we recommend if you’re barbecuing, take particularly chicken, for example, you may want to microwave it halfway cooked, and then put it on barbecue,” Curran said. “You don’t want to cook it the whole duration, because that really increases the risk of these compounds forming, which are known carcinogens.”
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17122667)
MICROWAVE? Ugh! Has anyone studied the health risks associated with using a microwave too cook your food?
Yes, in fact, someone has. A lot of people have. Including Dr. Bernard Blanc, a Swiss scientist actually tested people’s blood after they consumed food cooked in a microwave:
Lymphocytes (white blood cells) showed a more distinct short-term decrease following the intake of microwaved food than after the intake of all the other variants.
(http://www.cancersalves.com/articles/Microwave.html)
Oh my goodness! White blood cells. I’m no cancer expert, but don’t those factor in quite a bit when it comes to cancer?
And look at this: http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20041013.htm
This guy says that if you plant a seed in two different pots, and water one with regular tap water and the other with water that has been microwaved, the one with the microwaved water will not sprout. Isn’t that interesting? I want to try it.
Isn’t it also alarming? If microwaved water makes it so a seed will not sprout, what does it do to our bodies?
Let’s think about this for a second… people have been eating red meat for how long? Um, since the caveman days. How long have we had microwaves and soybean oil and processed foods? Just the past 50 years or so. And when did cancer start ravaging the population? Um, the past 50 years or so.
Gosh, it must be the meat eating. WHAT? How can you draw a conclusion like that? It’s absurd.
Plus they admitted that the heavy meat eaters in the study were more likely to smoke cigarettes and were less likely to eat fruits and vegetables.
If the people they studied were all non-smokers and were eating raw meat and no processed foods, then there might be a case. A good study might be to compare those folks to vegetarians who also ate no processed foods and did not use the microwave. But you’d have to severely restrict and monitor what they ate.
But you can’t just look at a population, pick one thing out of all the bad stuff they consume, and say that that is what is causing disease.
Here’s the study if you are interested: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040325
